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For Lesbian Golf Enthusiasts,
Palm Springs Is the Place to Be

The Nabisco Dinah Shore golf tournament is out of the closet -- and that has corporate sponsors increasingly excited about the potential of reaching a new, upscale market.

The annual Ladies Professional Golf Association event, to be played this weekend in Palm Springs, has over the past decade evolved into a major attraction for lesbian golf fans -- and women who simply want to party.

The result is that a growing group of companies now view the weekend as a great chance to market to a community that they haven't traditionally targeted.

"Dinah Shore is the top lesbian event on the West Coast," says Vivien Gay, a consultant with a Napa marketing firm called Isosceles. "It attracts the starched-linen lesbians" (translation: those in higher-income brackets).

In all, party promoters expect more than 20,000 lesbians to converge on the Dinah Shore not only for the action on the links, but for four days of cocktail hours, concerts, dances, comedy shows and other such gatherings. (Tournament officials expect total attendance to reach 85,000.)

"The parties have gotten bigger than the golf," says Joani Weir, a lesbian-party promoter who is planning to throw a series of soirees at the Doubletree Resort. All the hoopla, she adds, "brings in a lot of money."

Those listed as sponsors of Ms. Weir's party package range from the gay and lesbian newspaper the Advocate to American Airlines and Bud Light. St. Supery, a Napa winery, also came on board as a sponsor this year.

"We see the potential for inroads," says Sandy Flanders, St. Supery's marketing director. "This is a good market."

Ms. Gay says she expects more major corporations to get involved with the lesbian events each year. "More lesbians are out, and they have a higher profile than they did before," she says. "As a community, we're more comfortable with who we are, and we're out there spending our dollars."

-- Kathryn Kranhold

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Next: L.A. Bureau Sets Up Shop in San Diego

At least they know which way it is to San Jose.

In an attempt to cover the fast-moving technology industry more closely, Forbes magazine recently unveiled its new Silicon Valley bureau. The only problem some locals have with the office is that it isn't actually in Silicon Valley. Rather, it's tucked away in an office park in Burlingame, in San Mateo County.

"Locating their Silicon Valley bureau in Burlingame is like placing their Manhattan offices in Hoboken [N.J.]," says Steven Witt, a partner in Interactive Investments Inc. of Milpitas.

Actually, Forbes says the digs are only temporary until it can find reasonably affordable offices closer to the heart of the valley. "We expect to be moving out of here in a year or so," says the magazine's Silicon Valley bureau chief, Eric Nee.

In the meantime, Mr. Nee points out that the valley's borders are becoming less distinct anyway. Indeed, some believe that hard-core valley dwellers are simply having a tough time coming to grips with the fact that technology companies are now spreading so far and wide.

"They tend to not want to acknowledge that the Silicon Valley is moving north on 101 and 880," says Steve Tedesco, president of the San Jose Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. At this point, he adds, "Silicon Valley is a state of mind."